Tom was home when Lance arrived. “He’s in his room,” he told the boy.
While he watched Lance go down the hall and up the steps, Tom said, “He didn’t even say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Mesda’ or anything like that.”
“You don’t like that boy,” Lee said, not looking up from his computer.
“I don’t… Well, I don’t not like him. I was just pointing out that manners are appreciated.”
“Look,” Lee looked up from his computer, “you don’t have to justify it.”
Tom nodded. He knew that Lee hated to be interrupted when working. In fact, Tom knew that Lee would have preferred to be locked in his office, and was only here in the living room to make him happy. But he spoke anyway.
“And how do you feel about him?” “About Lance?”
“Um hum.”
“Not my business,” Lee shrugged. “I don’t really care.”
“Wow,” Tom said. “Well, you really do take seriously the idea of Dylan being my son and not yours.”
“That’s not it,” Lee said, turning around and looking slightly irritated.
He came to the sofa and sat down.
“My senses would be pricked if something important was happening, but Lance isn’t something important.”
“Well, Lance is good looking.” “Really?” Lee said.
“You know what I mean! For a eighteen year old.” “Um hum,” Lee said.
“Oh, stop that!” Tom told him. He sat down hard on the sofa beside his partner. “And we know Dylan is gay.”
“Why are you whispering it then?” Lee said.
Tom thought a while, and then said, “I don’t know.” “Look, Thomas,” Lee said, when Tom opened his mouth again, “you see me here, trying to get work done. If you say another word, I’m going to get up and go to the office.”
Tom was silent a moment. Even though Lee turned back to writing, through their years together he could feel Tom’s temptation to speak. When Tom leaned forward and began to open his mouth, Lee Philips warned, “One…. Solitary… word.”
Lance Bishop was a tall, narrow, employee at the Abercrombie and Fitch in the mall, and he looked like an employee of the Abercrombie and Fitch at the mall: tight faded jeans, tight faded shirt, too small hoodie. He stood at the entrance of Dylan’s room and said, “What’s up?”
“My cousin just published her first book.”
“Cool,” Lance said. Jamming his hands in his pockets, he slinked into the room and sat at the desk chair. “You gonna do some of that too? Or keep playing trumpet?”
Dylan shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “Maybe. Probably trumpet, though.”
Again, Lance said, “Cool.”
Dylan was about to say that Lance was a man of limited words, but then Lance said, “It’s been a dull weekend. Weekends are always boring when you go to your other Dad’s.”
“It’s not like you couldn’t come over there.”
“Ruthven called last night.” “Really?” Lance looked up. That had pricked something.
“I didn’t talk to him,” Dylan said. “He called. It was for my goddad really. So I just said I didn’t want to talk to him.”
“Well, good,” Lance said. Dylan wondered, if Lance weren’t so good looking, then would it be so apparent how insecure he was?
Lance sat with his legs wide apart and put his hands together, cracking his knuckles. He furrowed his brow and Dylan knew he was about to make a pronouncement.
“He never treated you very well. I don’t think you should talk to him at all.”
And there was the pronouncement.
Lee came out of his office. “Yes?” Tom looked up at him. “Fuck it,” Lee said.
He came and sat down beside his partner. “What did you have to say to me, Tommy?”
Tom smiled triumphantly at him, and then twisted around and said, “Just that I really don’t like Lance, but not because he’s bad.”
“No?”
“No,” Tom said. “Because he’s stupid. I think that Dylan could do better.”
“He’s not Dylan’s boyfriend. Just because your son is gay doesn’t mean every boy he knows is his love interest.”
“I know,” Tom said, though Lee wondered if he really did. “But he could still do better… Whatever he is.”
“Um hum,” Lee nodded. He got up and went toward the window.
“By the way, Tom.” “Yes?”
“Ruthven called last night.”
Well, Lee thought, that would shut him up for a while.
Layla started out of her nap, and Will was chuckling as she awoke.
“You!” she said, sitting up, and pulling his face to her, kissed him.
“Is my breath too bad?”
“I should be asking the same thing,” Will said. “I should be asking if I smell like the road?”
“The road? You only traveled from Chicago.” “That’s enough road.”
“And did Milo get that popcorn from the gas station and lie to Dena about it?”
“Not the gas station,” Will said, sitting on the bed beside Layla, while she wrapped an arm around him and stroked his hair back. “The Walgreens across from Loretto.”
“Oh.” “Yes.”
“And Bren and Kenny?”
“They ought to come home.”
“Brendan doesn’t want to give up on Chicago.”
“He wouldn’t be giving up,” Will said.
“I agree. But Brendan doesn’t. He thinks he’s got to stay in the big city. Conquer it or something like that.”
Will said: “I think it’ll make Kenny miserable.”
“Again, I agree.”
And then Will said, “But this isn’t supposed to be about them. What about you? What’s your news?”
“You didn’t see it? It was on the desk.”
“On the desk?”
Will got up and left the bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Layla waited, eagerly. And then she heard a shout and a few moments later Will came running into her room.
“Lay-Lah!”
“Yeah,” she nodded while he displayed the book.
He jumped on the bed with her and hugged her. They rolled around. She said, “And it’s so glossy. Isn’t it? And it’s so pretty.”
Will opened it up, stuck his face in and smiled at her over the corners. “And it smells good!”
Layla nodded. She loved that her man loved the smell of a new book.
Will kissed her. He kissed her again and then he put the book down.
“Layla… I think we should…” She smiled at him, pulling away. “I think we should too. After—”
“After I shower?”
“After you shower.”
Layla remembered lying on the bed, watching Will come back into the room, Will unwinding the towel from around his loins and moving through the ritual of combing his hair, rubbing down his flesh with oil, rolling deodorant under his arms. He lay across the bed while she scribbled words, and then they loved each other, and when it was done they didn’t hold onto each other. They never did that. They lay side by side and Layla closed her eyes savoring the memory of him, her clenching and unclenching her hands and feet, squeezing that inside place. She drifted off to sleep like that, and when she came to, Will was still snoring beside her, his head turned away.
She climbed out of bed and wrapped herself in a robe. She thought of putting real clothes on, but not right now. Layla went downstairs and into the kitchen, enjoying the feeling of being Mrs. Will, of having him back here. The phone rang and she picked it up quickly.
“Layla?”
Out of the voices she knew, Layla had to check her mental register to see whom it was.
“Meredith?’
“Yeah.”
“I heard you had some huge news.”
“What?” Layla had actually forgotten about the book. And then she said, “Yeah.”
“I think that’s great, Layla. I think you’re my new hero. Not that you weren’t before.”
“Well, of course,” Layla’s hip bumped the refrigerator door shut after she pulled out a yogurt.
“But I have some news to run by you. I mean, I have something important.”
“All right?” Layla said.
“I’ll tell you when I get there. It’s one of those ‘tell you when I get there’ sort of things.”
“Yes,” Chay answered while he was washing the dishes. Sheridan was on the bed wih books and papers spread out,
and he put his pencil half down and said, “Yeah, what?” Chay frowned.
“To your question. Earlier. Don’t you remember?” “Huh?”
“Well, if you’re going to be that way, I think I’ll change my mind.”
Sheridan was being that way. His head was full of French and history and only now did he remember what Chay might have been talking about.
“Is this about us?”
“Yes,” Chay said, shutting off the water.
Sheridan stopped for a moment. He smiled and said, “Is this about us moving in together?”
“It was going to be,” Chay said, feigning injury. “But if you don’t care as much as it seems you don’t care, all that packing I was thinking about doing, I just might unthink.”
Sheridan jumped up and came across the room, catching Chay’s wrists.
“Ouch! Abuse! Abuse!”
Sheridan kissed him tenderly on the lips and let him go. “Don’t you even think about not packing. I’ll go home and tell your folks myself. We’re gonna be roomies.”
When Meredith reached the house, Layla was dressed, and she thought about laying coffee out or some nonsense like that, but they were old friends, so she just turned on the TV and told her to help herself to the refrigerator.
“There is some Chinese food from a few nights before.” Meredith came back with the last of the orange chicken, and she was halfway through it before Layla said, “I trust you didn’t just come here to eat up all my food. You had something to say, right?”
“Right,” Meredith told her. “It’s Mathan,”
“He’s an axe murderer?”
“Not quite.”
“He’s a bigamist?”
“Not even that.”
“Alright?”
“He’s asked to marry me.”
“Well,” Layla sat up.
Then she said, “Why the delay?”
“Well, you and Will have been together so long, and… You’re not married. So I thought I’d ask you first. I wanted to know why you didn’t get married.”
“My mother always told me marriage was a compromise,” Layla said without missing a beat. “She told me marriage was about making do, looking the other way, putting up with, doing what you didn’t want and I knew I didn’t want that. So I just didn’t have it. Fenn and Todd looked happy and, of course, they aren’t married. So I think part of me thought, well that’s for me.”
Meredith nodded.
“I thought the same thing. But then Dad got married to Nell, and it seems to work.”
“I know. My mom’s second marriage is pretty happy too.”
“And of course, with you, if you married Will, how would it change things?”
“We keep steering away from that. I think we like how we are. I think we don’t want to be everyone else. Everyone thinks that’s the next step. You know me. High school, then college, then work, that’s the next step.” Layla shook her head and grinned, “I never believed in the next step. I believed in creating my own way. I’ve always been afraid that if you keep taking the next step then the next step, the one everyone else decides for you, then one day you’ll just end up stepping yourself into the grave.”
“That’s a good answer,” Meredith said.
“And then,” Layla admitted, “It could also be fear.”
“You’re the most fearless person I know.”
“Well, I’d like to think that’s true, but I think I just put on a good face. Maybe we don’t get married because I’m afraid it would change things. Make them dull. Make us dull.
“I don’t know,” Layla said. “Maybe I don’t want to know.”
